A Brief Musing On Art and the Finite
On Valentine’s Day, I woke up to the news that Yoshitaka Murayama of Genso Suikoden fame, writer of the upcoming Eiyuden Chronicle game, to name only two of his accomplishments, died last week, due to “complications with an ongoing illness” (Project Update 70 from Rabbit & Bear Studio).
I hope at the least, he was not in pain when he went.
I'm sure fans are happy to know he had completed writing of Eiyuden Chronicle before he passed.
I put on some Suikoden music thinking to honor him, and as soon as I hit a remix of “La mia tristezza”, I started crying.
Now, of course any artist (of high or low art, regardless of medium) dying is sad. I'm sure every death in the world is mourned by someone, whether or not they created or if you feel they deserve to be mourned, to use an example like Kissinger.
But, and this may be obvious, when someone dies, you really feel the sense of transience for every living thing.
When an artist dies (or a lighter example, a band breaks up with irreconcilable differences) the Finiteness strikes me. Like, yes, I am mortal, I can only produce Finite amounts of art, but while I am alive, it feels infinite. I'm certain it would feel different if I discovered I had a terminal disease.
And I feel that infinity with most art I experience. Until something happens that reminds me that life is short.
It's not like I've played all of Murayama's games. I haven't even gotten the good ending on Suikoden II yet. And of course Eiyuden Chronicle is coming out in a couple months, I will play through that and Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising really trying to absorb the story.
While I am sad, there is something I remember from the first book of Shusterman's Arc of a Scythe series, where the two protagonists are in a museum, looking at the art from the Mortal Era, and the art from their current, virtually immortal time, and it's clear the art from the Mortal Era is more moving, possibly because the artists had to contend with mortality (and poverty, and war, and so on). Maybe that is worth dwelling on.
Feel free to at me on the Fediverse, please provide context though.